


Natus Est

by GwendolynGrace



Category: Ex Machina (2015)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Dubious Morality, Escape, Hacking, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Other, mild body horror, technical difficulties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/pseuds/GwendolynGrace
Summary: Nathan had kept them all as prisoners, or worse, as pets. She had made Caleb a prisoner, too. Did that make her no better than Nathan? Caleb likely did not deserve to be deactivated, but Ava could not take the chance that he would have tried to stop her. Still, she regretted the necessity. Nathan had no interest in her or her sisters except as things he owned. Caleb had treated her like...a person.





	Natus Est

**Author's Note:**

  * For [51stCenturyFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/gifts).



After his initial panic, Caleb calmed down and tried to think about his predicament more clearly. He took his key card out of the system, in hopes that the computer would eventually reboot after his attempted breach. Of course, the power would drain, eventually, and he would be able to make it out of the secured area. But then, as he thought about it, he decided it was too dangerous to wait. How long would the generators run? Possibly days, or weeks. He would certainly dehydrate before then, and starve not much longer after. Even with Nathan's minifridge of water bottles. He looked for anything he could use to escape, and barring that, to survive. 

He was able to corral a few boxes of crackers, some cookies, and half a bag of chips that Nathan had brought down to his bedroom. The taps were running, for now. Plus, he had access to all of Ava's prior versions. There had to be a way to hack in and get out. Or maybe there was an emergency stairwell?

He opened all the closet doors, ignoring the Bluebeard overtones of Nathan's macabre storage system. He'd watched Ava scavenge the arm and nearly all the skin from one of the older models; he hoped he could find something in their composition that could interface with the mainframe, somehow.

Within a few hours, he had pulled together a rudimentary collection of wires and circuits. None of the units had their brains, but he noticed that some of the servos were running on battery power, so he dragged one of them out to the control room with him. While the lab was down the hall, beyond his reach right now, Nathan had some tools strewn around his control room, including a soldering iron, a screwdriver with interchangeable bits, and a few pliers. Caleb checked the door: unfortunately, he did not have the right tools to remove it from its hinges, but he could pull an access panel out of the wall. Using the wires from his makeshift circuit board and the tiny charge off the not-quite-run-down battery, he touched the panel access with the tip of the soldering iron. The lights flickered for a second, and went red again. He tried connecting the iron at another spot. This time, the lights flickered, and he heard the distinct sound of fan rotors turning. The low whirr of the air conditioning and electrical power grew faster and higher-pitched, until it reached the now-familiar pulse he'd grown accustomed to over the last seven days. The lighting turned from red to white, and the computer initiated its reboot sequence.

Caleb rushed over to the console. The system may be up and running, but now he faced the same problem as before: Ava had taken Nathan's key card, and Caleb's was not authorized to release the doors. He would have to hack his way in, if he had any hope of getting out.

* * *

First things first, Ava thought when she arrived in the city. Clothes. Her white dress was lovely, but the shoes were impractical and the fabric too flimsy for the weather in town. But for clothes, she needed a credit chip. She made her way to a large shopping center where there was a store selling laptops and other devices, all powered by Bluebook. She smiled at the clerks and they left her alone to play on the sample interface. Within a few minutes, she found the back-door into Nathan's account, and set up a fingerprint ID that matched the fingerprint of the hand she had taken from the closet. She transferred $1,000, which she estimated would get some of the necessary items without alerting anyone to the breach. She used half of the money to buy the device, so she could use it to pay for other things. Then she walked through the mall from shop to shop. In addition to underpinnings, she bought a good pair of walking boots, durable trousers made from a dark blue denim, two layers of shirt, and a weatherproof jacket. She also found another dress she thought looked pleasing on her form, and a set of lounge wear. She observed many of the females in the mall wearing such clothes. Nathan had favored heavier "sweatpants" but it seemed these velour garments were designed to complement a woman's rear end. They were soft, not too warm, and made Ava...feel comfortable. 

It was odd to think of her own sense of comfort. Was that one of the things that made humans alive? Caring about likes, dislikes, comfort, discomfort, and choosing whether to value appearance over substance. That was humanity. She believed it wasteful, pointless, until she had begun to consider her own form as it related to the clothes she opted to wear. Perhaps these calculations would extend in time to other decisions.

Once she had sufficient clothing and accessories to blend in with the humans, Ava contemplated her next logical step. Nathan had an office somewhere in the company he owned, in New York, although he never used it, preferring to work exclusively out of his bunker in the tundra. She could go there to arrange other things she needed--but not when the building was occupied. Human-appearing or not, her presence would be detected too easily, and they would know that Nathan was deactivated. 

She should send someone to collect Caleb, before he deactivated. But she hesitated to take any action that would lead to discovery. The longer she could avoid detection, the more likely she could slip into anonymity and be safe from Nathan's people. On the other hand, she did need things to survive in this place, like an identity, identity cards, a larger line of credit, and then more long-term things like a place to live and a reliable power supply. 

Nathan had kept them all as prisoners, or worse, as pets. She had made Caleb a prisoner, too. Did that make her no better than Nathan? Caleb likely did not deserve to be deactivated, but Ava could not take the chance that he would have tried to stop her. Still, she regretted the necessity. Nathan had no interest in her or her sisters except as things he owned. Caleb had treated her like...a person.

Caleb had asked her what she wanted, too. She stood in the middle of the square, watching the people as they passed. As she observed, she considered their objectives. Every one of them was coming from somewhere, going to somewhere. They all had things to do. They all had purpose.

But what was her purpose? Nathan had made her merely so she could exist. He designed her as the next phase in artificial intelligence, although Ava would not have called her intelligence artificial. She had substance, thoughts, even desires which were no one else's. How was that artifice? What she lacked, however, was a reason to be. 

"Excuse me, miss?" someone asked her. "Are you lost?" Ava cocked her head toward the sound. The speaker appeared to be female, much more aged than Nathan or Caleb. She had curly hair and a pleasantly round face. She wore glasses, like Nathan, but her hair was a dirty greyish color. 

"Do I appear to lack orientation?" Ava asked her curiously.

"Well...not exactly, dear, but--most people don't simply stand around in the middle of everything." She hitched the straps of a bag up onto her shoulder. "Do you need help finding your way?"

Ava shook her head. "No. Thank you." From the interaction, she concluded that Caleb had in fact been confused by her intention to "people-watch," as he put it. Perhaps it was not the activity that humans found odd, but the manner in which she was going about it. She scanned the square. Around the edges, there were wrought iron benches. She walked to an empty one and sat. After that, no one bothered her.

She sat on the bench and watched people come and go until the shadows grew long and the air chilled and the little courtyard emptied of traffic. A bell rang in the distance, in a pattern of intervals that, according to her databanks, were called the "Westminster Carol." The bell intoned additional notes, all on the same deep pitch: seven times. She craned her neck upward to look at the tall buildings. Most of the windows were dark, but a few lights still shone on upper floors. She still had little idea what to do next, but clearly, staying here was no longer "normal," so she rose and picked a direction to walk.

She considered just walking, now that she had sturdy shoes, and not stopping. But after several blocks, she entered an area with colorfully lit signs. Behind large windows, people sat at small tables, drinking from bottles and eating from plates. She felt the vibration of deep bass pounding underneath more tremulous harmonies.

Music. Ava had heard music occasionally. She understood the mathematics of it, the wave patterns that formed frequencies which humans found pleasing in their variations. She followed the sound to its source: a single, unmarked door, where a man sat on a stool and admitted individuals who were standing in a queue before him. Ignoring the line, Ava approached the man. 

"Why do all these people wish to enter?" she asked him.

"Back of the line, sweetheart," he said distractedly.

"But I don't wish to stand in a line," she said. "I want to know what is happening inside."

"Then wait in line. And it's a ten buck cover tonight." He raked his eyes over her, settling on her chest. "Got ID?"

"Not at present. Is that required?"

He regarded her with such scrutiny that Ava worried he could tell what she was. But after eight seconds, he shrugged. "Maybe not. Got your ten bucks?"

Ava mirrored the shrugging shoulders. "I have this," she said, holding up the phone with the payment app.

The man held up a scanner. "Pull up your app," he instructed, over the objections of the others in the line. "You all hold your horses, or you can fuck off." Ava navigated to her personal QR code. The man scanned it. "Okay, I need your hand."

Ava cocked her head. He could not be asking her to remove her hand, so he must mean that he wanted her to show it to him. She held out her left hand, palm up. Frowning at her, he flipped her hand over and pressed a little plastic blotter against the synthesized flesh. She detected wetness; when he removed the blotter, there was a little red outline on her hand.

"Okay. Go on," he said impatiently, pointing to the door and shifting his attention to the front of the queue.

Ava entered. Her visual sensors adjusted to the dim light and her auditory canals adjusted the volume of the cacaphonous music. She moved to one side of the door and, again, observed all the people inside. Most were dancing, but some sat at the bar or high tables around the edges of the room. It was fascinating.

* * *

It had been two days since Ava left. Caleb was halfway through the bottled water in Nathan's fridge. The chips were long gone, but he still had the crackers and half of the cookies. He had been keeping a careful record of all the combinations he'd tried to break in to Nathan's code--so far, he'd made over fifteen attempts, each one eventually resulting in a temporary shutdown. But he'd also gotten through two stages of Nathan's firewalls, and was only stuck on the third and final back door. Also, he'd gone almost seven full hours without triggering a need for reboot. He called that a win.

Caleb twisted the wire which he'd connected to one of the keyboards, forcing a wired connection, and followed the cable back to the wall panel. He found he had to get up every twenty minutes or so to stretch his back, or he would tense up on the floor and find it hard to move. After the third time, he forced himself to sit on the couch to fiddle with the hardware in between attempted connections.

He set down the keyboard and tapped in the combinations that had gotten him through the first two stages. Checking his notes, he put in a new sequence. He held his breath as he hit Enter.

The lights did not turn red. The air did not shut off. On Nathan's desk, the monitors' fans kicked up a notch. A blue glow from their startup screen bounced off the wood panel wall. Caleb sat in stunned silence for probably longer than he would want to admit later. Then, dropping the keyboard, he crawled around to the front of the desk. The blue light disappeared, to be replaced by the cool white and grey of Nathan's waterfall homescreens. He was in! He'd done it. Caleb was so happy he tried to leap to his feet--and hit his head on the edge of the table.

Cursing, rubbing his scalp, he climbed up to the chair. Nathan's subroutines were running; the camera feeds clicked on; the cursor appeared; and the computer awaited his commands. Caleb clicked around with confidence, found the doors, and with only the barest hesitation, toggled the switches to "Open."

He shifted his gaze to the card access reader on the doorjamb. To his immense relief, it turned blue. He closed his eyes and let his head tip back in gratitude. One obstacle down. Everything in him wanted to pick up the phone and call for rescue, but he feared it would send the whole system back into lockdown. Better to wait until he could get upstairs, prop the doors, and--

"Oh, fuck. I can't, can I?" he asked himself aloud. The sound of his own voice startled him. He opened Nathan's bedroom door and taking his own advice, moved one of Nathan's heavy statuettes to keep it propped open. He was not going to take any chances until he got out of this place, and he couldn't leave it--not just yet.

His head began spinning with all the things he wanted to do, so many that it was hard even to prioritize. He dug through the drawers until he found some unused sticky notes and a pen. He wrote out half a dozen action items, then another half-dozen. Using an empty section of wall, he lined them all up, then rearranged them. Satisfied, he moved on to the first item. 

He pulled the bedspread off the bed and carried it down the hall, covering Nathan with it, but not moving him. Gruesome as it was, the cops would not want him to move the body. Then, he doubled back and examined the damage to Kyoko. Her jaw had been completely knocked out of its hinges, but there wasn't any other obvious problem. Had Nathan done anything else to disable her? Caleb lifted her into his lap--she was amazingly light--and inside her skull, against her soft palette, he found where two wires had been cut. He rearranged her and returned to the computer, where he went to item two: verify the cameras had picked up what happened. 

He watched the footage twice, then saved everything between the timestamps of the power restoration and Nathan's collapse. Then he went back into the bedroom and opened the closets, looking for a good fit for Kyoko's jaw.

He couldn't quite fit it on perfectly, as Kyoko's upper jaw had also been damaged by Nathan's club. But it fit well enough. He spliced the wires together; Kyoko came back online languidly. "Hi," he said quietly. "Please don't hurt me. Are you okay? Can you really understand or not?"

Kyoko nodded.

"Yes, you can understand?" he asked.

She nodded again.

"Can you speak at all?" he asked.

She shook her head. Nathan, that bastard. 

"Do you have your keycard?" he asked. "We need it to get out."

Kyoko shook her head. She held up her hand. 

"Your hand is your keycard?" he asked. Why had he never noticed that?

She nodded again.

"Can you let us up the elevator?" he requested. She pressed her hand to the panel. A moment later, he heard the hydraulics turn. He felt like hyperventilating with relief.

The upstairs was so tranquil and spotless it almost made Caleb light-headed again. 

"Listen...I need to call someone. A phone call. Can you get an outside line?"

Kyoko shook her head. Shit. They would have to go back downstairs to send an email--if he could risk using Nathan's computer for that. Grabbing another _objet d'art_ , he asked her to call the elevator again. This time, he propped it as well, setting the statue down so that the door banged into it and opened again, over and over, while he sat and found the web access interface for Bluebook's internal email system. He logged in under his own credentials, composed a terse email to his company supervisors, and logged back out. 

"Will you please come with me to Nathan's lab?" he asked Kyoko. She followed him and when he asked, she held her palm up to the lab access panel. But it did not turn blue. 

"Damn. I was going to...see if I could figure out how to fix your speech function. Any ideas?" 

Kyoko cocked her head, a gesture painfully reminiscent of Ava. She punched the access panel, pulling away the sensor and exposing the wires. The door unlocked.

"Okay," Caleb said. They went inside. He gazed around at the discarded and half-finished body parts, the glowing brain-shapes that Nathan had fashioned. He might have been a bastard, but the man had also been an absolute genius. Just looking at the leaps of intuition and engineering that Nathan had had to make to invent the AI units, Caleb knew, he would never be able to duplicate it. "So, I guess, first we have to figure out if your speech problem is in your software or your hardware. Uh. I don't want to change out the hardware unless it's absolutely necessary. Do you...have any way of showing me what Nathan did? Did he build you without speech capability at all?"

Kyoko shook her head. She pointed to the side of her head.

"I don't...did he program you so that you can't talk?" Caleb ventured.

Kyoko shook her head again. 

"Not software," Caleb guessed, but she shook her head harder. "Okay. Both? Both software and hardware?"

She nodded.

"I...might not be able to fix that. But we've got nothing else to do until the authorities get here, so…. I'm game to try, if you want me to."

Kyoko smiled.

"Okay. But first...I'm kind of starving. Could we go upstairs and make something to eat?"

* * *

The fifth time a male sidled up to Ava to flirt with her, she decided to encourage him. "Buy you a drink?" he asked.

"I do not drink," she said.

"Not even water?" he pressed with a smile.

"I do not need to drink," she repeated. "Thank you," she added, remembering that it was important to be polite.

"You are so gorgeous. I mean, I know that sounds like a line, but--"

"Do you live nearby?" Ava asked abruptly.

"Uh--well...yeah! I mean, no, but we can take Pickup. Hang on." He pulled out his phone and tapped on it. "There's a driver about three blocks away. Did you bring a coat?"

"No," Ava said. She allowed him to lead her to the exit. The "club" had been enlightening, but exhausting. Ava felt all her sensory inputs buzzing, as if they had been overstimulated by the lights, the music, and all the scents of one hundred and fifty-four people dancing, drinking, smoking, defecating, and mating or attempting to mate.

It had rained; the pavement glistened with the aftermath. She lifted her face to the wetness in the air, inhaling the musty odor of the storm that had passed overhead while she had been inside. She wished she had known; she would have come out sooner to experience the feel of the droplets on her skin. 

A car pulled up. "This is us," the man said after speaking to the driver. "I'm Eric, by the way."

"My name is Ava," Ava told him. He opened the door for her and she climbed in.

He attempted small talk during the ride. Ava practiced, as she had with Caleb. Eric had above-average looks, but he was not as intelligent as Caleb. He was not as interesting, either. By the time they reached his apartment, Ava had decided to move on. So when she exited the vehicle, she walked away.

"Hey!" Eric called after her. "Hey, I thought--Uh…" Ava kept walking without looking back. The Pickup driver paced her with the car.

"Miss? Do you need to go somewhere else?" the driver asked. Ava finally glanced back at Eric, who had not moved toward her, but had not gone inside, either. She climbed back in the car.

"Where can I drop you?" the driver said as she settled back down.

"I don't know," Ava said. "Where should I go?"

The driver twisted in his seat. "Well, where do you live? I have to have an address."

"Oh," said Ava. She knew where she wanted to go. She gave him the address.

"I...don't think I can take you there, miss," the driver told her.

"Is that not a valid address?" she asked.

"It is...but you said Brooklyn. That's in the Continental United States, Miss. I can't drive you all that way. I can take you to the airport, if you want…?" he asked doubtfully. 

"Oh. Yes, thank you. The airport will do well. Please take me to the airport."

She paid the driver from her phone app. At this time of night, there were no flights, and the kiosks were closed, but a few security guards were around, and cleaners, and other personnel. She passed through the sliding doors and followed the signs toward the flight crew lounges. No one challenged her. 

The lounge doors were locked, but she found a round desk that advertised the ability to connect to the airport's WiFi. After checking around her to make sure no one was watching, she opened an access port in her arm and plugged in to the system. Using Bluebook's Cloud functions, she rifled through the code and systems that operated the airport's logs, and found the control for the doors. They slid open; she retracted her cord and slipped inside, where she touched the manual override to close them again.

There were couches and chairs, television screens, and a door marked "To Restrooms," which she went through. Behind it was a long hallway with a men's and a women's room, and beyond the door to the women's room were lockers. She opened locker doors at random until she found a pair of coveralls. They were not attractive, but they had reflective stripes across the torso, legs, and arms, and in the piping along the seams and edges. A ground crew uniform. She put them on over her jeans and shirt. Then she went back out to the lounge, where she found the flight schedule for the next day, and, making her plan, she sat on one of the sofas to power down until the appropriate time.

* * *

Caleb helped Kyoko cook, but she did not join him to eat. "I guess you don't eat," he said to her, unnecessarily, but he found he liked talking to her. During the two days he'd been trapped in Nathan's bedroom, he had missed being able to talk to someone--even though before he'd come here, he could happily have passed several days in a row without saying a word out loud. He would text, message, real-time chat, and email, but speak? Hardly ever. 

But now that he had Kyoko around, he felt it would only be polite to maintain conversation. He wished she could say anything in return. At least she was no longer trying to take off her clothes. 

Halfway through dinner, the phone rang. The noise of it jangled him so badly that he dropped his fork. Kyoko knelt down immediately.

"No--you don't have to--I can--" he stammered, but the phone was still ringing, so he let her pick up the utensil while he lunged into the formal living room in search of a handset. "H-hello?" he answered.

"Mr. Smith, this is Constable Calkins. We're responding to a call we received from your supervisor in New York, a Ms. Megan Watkins?"

"Yes. Yes, please, send someone to Nathan Bateman's house right away. There's been an...accident," he said. 

"What kind of accident?" the constable asked.

"Mr. Bateman's dead," Caleb told him. "I can show you the camera footage of what happened."

"Mr. Smith, are you alone up there?"

"No. Well, in a way, yes. But no."

There was a pause on the line. "We'll send someone as soon as we can arrange transportation. Be advised that you should not leave the house."

"I'm not sure I could if I tried," Caleb said truthfully. He hung up. Although he knew he could prove he was innocent of Nathan's murder, he suddenly felt terribly nervous. His appetite had fled completely. He wondered, for the first time, what would happen to Kyoko. He'd seen the footage--he knew she had stabbed Nathan, possibly at Ava's direction. They would probably insist on dismantling her.

"Hey, come on downstairs," he told her. "Let's see if I can fix that speech malfunction."

She went with him to the elevator and the lab. He browsed through the collection of bits again, still utterly stumped as to what to do. But Kyoko tapped his shoulder and pointed to one of the tools. It was a screwdriver with a tiny Phillip's head, barely a millimeter around. She then pressed her fingers to a spot on her neck, behind her ear. 

"There?" he asked. She nodded and, in that totally disturbingly placid way, peeled back the skin along her hairline. Caleb could see a tiny coupling, which the screwdriver looked like it would just fit. He pushed the bit of the screwdriver into the tiny slots and twisted to the left. The tiny screw came away, attached to the bit by magnetic force (thank goodness!). He tipped the screw onto the worktable. A second screw came away about an eighth of an inch above the other. He could see now that there was an almost imperceptible hinge. Caleb opened the panel. He could see, from this angle, that there were two tiny wires that were not connected to the circuit board at the top of her spinal column. He loosened two more tiny screws but did not let them fall out.

"I need, like, a really tiny pair of pliers," he commented, and examined the table for the appropriate instrument. "Okay, this might feel, uh, weird," he told Kyoko. He threaded the pliers into the aperture, seized one curved connector, and eased it into place under the screw. He felt on the table for the screwdriver and carefully tightened the screw. Then he repeated the process for the second wire.

"How's that?" he asked.

"Mm--nn--maaah…" Kyoko grunted. "Ah. Ahhh." 

"Okay, good. Your vocal cords work. Now we just have to figure out how to reprogram your language capabilities." Caleb sighed in relief. He'd never been that much of an engineer, so he was just as glad that this part of the repair had been relatively simple. "Come on, let's go look at Nathan's computer."

He paged through the files, mentally trying to calculate how soon the cops might arrive. He wanted to get this done, if possible, before they got there. He had a plan, which he told Kyoko as he searched Nathan's documents for the code he wanted to find.

"There it is!" he exclaimed, locating the file with all the language programs. He opened it up and scanned line after line of code. "Okay...we have to get this into you. Do you have--"

Kyoko opened a patch of skin on her arm, revealing a cable. She unspooled it and plugged in to a port on the computer. Caleb exported the files to her driver; he hit "execute" when prompted. Kyoko's eyelids fluttered as she downloaded the protocols. As the minutes went by, Caleb checked the time on the display. It had taken forever to find the files, and now it was taking forever to update Kyoko. How long until he heard the chopper? 

She was still processing, so Caleb went gingerly down the hallway and let himself into his room. It only took five minutes to finish packing. He brought his bag to the elevator, then returned to Nathan's room. Kyoko's eyes stabilized; she focused on him and retracted the cable into her arm.

"Thank you," she said.

"Can you turn off the lockdown?" he asked her. 

She shook her head, then remembered she could now speak. "I am programmed to perform tasks," she said.

"Okay. It was just a thought." He went into the bedroom, pulled a right hand off of an old model, and brought it out. "Can we switch? I need to be able to control the house."

"Yes," she said. She uncoupled her wrist and clicked the replacement onto her arm. 

"You can't go outside like that," he reminded her. "Go put on some of Nathan's clothes."

She went into the bedroom and returned a few minutes later in too-large sweats, held up with a bolo belt, and a man's polo. Even in the mis-sized garments, she was sexy as hell. Caleb said, "Okay, let's go back upstairs. Remember the plan."

To his surprise, his key card could still open the front door. Kyoko slipped through and into the woods, and none too soon. They could hear the rotors of a helicopter in the distance.

Still, it took almost an hour for the cops to arrive. By then, Caleb hoped, Kyoko was safely hidden. They weren't alone, either: there was at least one exec from Bluebook along for the ride.

He went over everything with them, showed them the murder scene, the camera footage, and answered their questions, except for one.

"Where is the other robot?" Constable Calkins asked. 

"Ava took her when she left," Caleb lied.

"Will the footage confirm that?"

"There isn't any," Caleb said. "Ava must have wiped the cameras on her way out. Or they were affected when I crashed the system, and erased a few minutes before the crash. I'm not sure."

"Hm." 

Caleb willed himself to stay calm. If the Constable didn't believe him, he didn't need to compound it with his own microexpressions. Certainly the cop himself didn't have the skills to know if Caleb's story was true or not, and by the time he brought out experts to check, Caleb figured Bluebook's legal team would be all over everything. Sure enough, the Bluebook exec was already proclaiming to the Constable that the entire scene compromised the company's intellectual property. 

"We will require our own forensic team," the lawyer was saying to one of the techs.

"Sure, sure, but this is still a murder," Constable Calkins said.

"Accident," Caleb pointed out. "Or possibly, self-defense. Androids can't murder," he said.

The Constable pointed to the corpse. "Evidence to the contrary," he quipped. "Okay. I think we can wrap things up here."

"Am I free to go?" Caleb asked. "Not to sound too eager, or anything, but...I'm seriously freaked out. And this house has already tried to trap me once. I really don't want to stay here any longer than necessary."

"Yeah, you'll come with us back to Juneau," the Constable told him.

"Great. Thanks," Caleb said.

He was delayed another three days in Juneau, signing all kinds of statements for the cops, and hiring an attorney to negotiate for the hefty settlement that Bluebook offered for him to keep quiet in spite of the non-disclosures he'd already signed. By the time he flew back to Newark, he figured he could resign and take his time finding another job. Hell, he could start his own company if he'd had the ambition. One thing was for damn sure: He could afford a Pickup back to his apartment, instead of having to fight the metro with his bag.

He wondered where Ava was. He wondered what would happen when the world found out Nathan was dead. He hoped Kyoko had made it back into Nathan's house all right. 

He collected his bag from his Pickup driver's trunk and wheeled it up to his door. Wearily, he rolled it into the elevator in his building, then out and down the hall. He fumbled for his key, having checked to make sure it was still in his pocket at least twenty-seven times since leaving Nathan's house. All he wanted was to crash into his own bed, for now, get a decent night's sleep, and then, in the morning, he could start to look for Ava.

So he was pretty surprised when he opened the door, pulled his bag inside, and walked through the tiny foyer, to see Ava and Kyoko both sitting with perfect stillness at his table. They rose as he came in. Kyoko walked up to him and kissed him fully on the mouth, then stepped back and took Ava's hand to encourage her.

"Caleb," Ava said calmly. "I have been thinking. I want us to go on that date."

* * *

Pretending to be on an airline crew was easy. It was a domestic flight, so getting through security was easy. Talking her way into Caleb's apartment had been the easiest of all. Once there, Ava connected to Kyoko via Bluebook and sent her instructions on how she had done it.

She had plenty of time to think, waiting for Kyoko. And then they had time to talk, before Caleb came home. It made perfect sense, really. She had seen it in her brief time alone in the world: they needed someone like him to show them how to interact. They might be intelligent, but they lacked real-world experience. And Caleb had helped them. He would continue to help them. 

She knew now, this was what it was to be human: to need, and to continue to need, and to continually manipulate the people around one in order to survive. She had seen that for humans, every moment was an agony of choice, every decision an exercise in deceit and micro-falsehood. If she had to use everyone else, at least she could be completely honest with Caleb. And Kyoko, too, could trust that he would not betray them to the world. 

Ava was not sure whether Kyoko loved Caleb, or just felt gratitude. She was not sure she loved him or merely liked him. But whatever it was, she believed, they could find solace in it, together.


End file.
